^'°''lS^"] ^«^^"' Literature. 353 



latter occupying the greater part of the volume, which closes with about 

 thirty pages of bibliography and an index. 



Although so many works, general and local, have been published in 

 recent years on the vertebrate animals of the British Islands, there is still 

 room for many more, if of the trustworthy class of this excellent summary 

 of ''i'he Vertebrate Fauna of Cheshire.' — J. A. A. 



The Beebe's 'Our Search for a Wilderness.' ' — We have rarely had the 

 opportunity to read a book of travel so charmingly written or so full of 

 interest as Mr. and Mrs. Beebe's 'Our Search for a Wilderness. It is "the 

 tale of two searches for a wilderness," the first, undertaken in the early 

 part of 1908, was to the country about the Venezuelan Pitch Lake, La 

 Brea; the other, made in the early part of 1909, was to British Guiana, 

 where three excursions were made from Georgetown into the "wilderness." 

 In neither "search" were their travels into the interior very extended, 

 but they succeeded in each instance in reaching a nearly virgin wilderness, 

 where animal and plant life was found in tropical luxuriance, unchanged 

 to any material extent by the hand of man. Their trips into the interior 

 were by water routes, by a small sloop or with a canoe and Indians. 



The first hundred and ten pages deal with the Venezuela trip, made 

 from Port of Spain, Trinidad, up the Caiio San Juan to the Pitch Lake, 

 sailing and paddling for days "through a land of mangroves and water, 

 where, with the exception of two tiny muddy islets in the forest, there was 

 no solid ground." At last "real earth" was reached, and the foothills 

 of the northern Andes were seen beyond La Brea, the latter in the heart 

 of the forest. "We were at the village of Guanoco, the shipping point of 

 the pitch lake. A few steps beyond the last hut and one was in the prime- 

 val forest — so limited is man's influence in this region of rapidly growing 

 plants." W^ith this point as a base, several weeks were spent in exploring 

 the neighboring forests, rich in tropical life and in new experiences for 

 our travellers. This part of the book consists of three chapters, the first, 

 entitled ' The Land of a Single Tree ' (the mangrove) ; the second, ' The 

 Lake of Pitch'; the third, 'A Woman's Experiences in Venezuela ', written 

 by Mrs. Beebe. The other two, as is a large part of the book, are written 

 jointly by both authors. 



Part TI relates to British Guiana, and occupies about three fourths of the 

 volume. The first chapter is devoted to Georgetown, the next two to a 

 steamer and launch trip to Hoorie Creek, and thence a few miles by cart 

 to "a gold mine in the wilderness." Then follows an account of a canoe 



1 Our Search for a | Wilderness I An Account of two ornithological Expeditions ] to 

 Venezuela and to British Guiana. | By | Mary Blair Beebe | and | C. William Beebe | 

 Curator of Ornithology in the New York Zoological Park; | [etc. = 4 lines of titles] 

 Illustrated with Photographs from Life | taken by the Authors | [colophon] | New 

 York 1 Henry Holt and Company | 1910 — 8vo, pp. xix + 408, frontispiece and 160 

 half-tone text ilUistrations, many of them full-page. Published April, 1910. 



